An advanced look at the Democrats’ spending plan
Speaking Security Newsletter | Congressional Candidate Advisory Note 21 | 30 June 2020
In this note, a guide to:
The legislative process for federal spending
Dismantling the faux-progressive responses given by Democrats to make them look not completely out of touch or corrupt when they vote for obscene levels of military spending
Also: SPRI published an article on the latest sanctions on Syria, via the Caesar Act. If your opponent voted for the 2020 NDAA (votes: House, Senate), then your opponent is complicit.
Situation
The Chair of the House Armed Services Committee will release his recommended adjustments to Trump’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget request tomorrow (July 1) to the full committee for the ‘markup period.’ Here’s an advanced copy. The most revealing bits:
$731.6 billion* in total, giving Trump almost exactly the amount he asked for
$1 billion (purportedly) for the COVID-19 response
$3.6 billion for posturing toward China
*Refers to the amount under committee jurisdiction. The real total is $740.5 billion, per a previously-reached bipartisan spending agreement. The latter includes military projects funded outside DOD proper, like DOE’s nuclear weapons program.
1. The federal budget process, by season
We’re behind schedule this year. So for the typical biorhythm outlined below, we’re in the Spring phase.
Winter (early February): The ‘President’s Budget’ is released/submitted to Congress. Therein, the Administration makes budget requests for all federal agencies. For example, here’s Trump’s Fiscal Year 2021 request for DOD.
Spring (late February to May): Starting with committee leadership, members of Congress start messing around with the sections of the President’s Budget that pertain to their committee assignments (the ‘markup period’). So for the DOD budget, that’s four main committees: Armed Services Committee (in both the House and Senate) and Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Defense (House and Senate).
Summer (June to August): Committees send their altered version of the President’s Budget to the full chamber (for both House and Senate). Once it’s brought to the floor, any member of Congress can offer an amendment to the bill. Then each chamber votes on their respective version.
Fall (September to November): Senior members of the same committees from both the House and Senate get together to create the ‘conference version’ of the bill. Once those ad-hoc joint committees agree, they send it back to their respective chambers for a vote. Then the bill gets sent to the President.
2. How this will end
Establishment Democrats will vote for the defense budget in exchange for a commiserate increase in non-defense spending. They’ll justify their vote on these grounds, plus something trite about “national security” and “our troops” in a press release.
This is the mentality of a loser. Two reasons:
A) Ignores structural problems
Everything’s getting more expensive, but perhaps none faster than military equipment. You’d think this would result in Congress adjusting its arbitrary 355-ship quota (and similar quotas for other military stuff, like aircraft), but no.
Given how drastically the cost of military platforms outpaces inflation, in theory the whole of the DOD budget will eventually go toward buying one ship (or one airplane):
^The study from which I pulled this chart is from a while ago, but far as I can tell these rates have held steady (aside from maybe gasoline, I dunno). Example: a more recent report on aircraft procurement that finds about the same cost growth rate as ships.
Basically we’re buying less and less with more and more money. Unless the structure is changed — namely, the arbitrary ship/whatever quotas and the very notion of a privatized defense industry — it will never be enough, regardless of how much we spend on defense.
You see a similar thing going on with health care. Unless we change the structure (from a privatized model to Medicare For All), we’re trapped in hell:
^Discovered this graphic here.
B) Defense increases outpace Democrats’ non-defense ‘offsets’
This one’s more straightforward.
Conclusion
The biggest thing to remember is that every new federal budget presents the opportunity to create an entirely new country, one that actually responds to working-class needs. Tomorrow (July 1), we’ll see that even in the midst of a public health crisis, Democratic leadership is fine with doing the same thing.
I try to limit profanity in my newsletters. This was a tough one.
Hope this helps,
Stephen (stephen@securityreform.org; @stephensemler)